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You could also buy magazines with 1000's of lines of Basic code that required you to simply type it in and get it working. So, programming learning methods wer

You could also buy magazines with 1000's of lines of Basic code that required you to simply type it in and get it working. So, programming learning methods were different. First, you had to type in all that code, and inquiring minds would eventually wonder what each of those lines did. So you would learn something new with every month's magazine that arrived in the mail. Second, you had to debug all that code you typed in, because no one can manually type in 1000's of lines of code copied from a magazine without errors. it was a fun time to learn....

scarface74 9y ago
It was worse. AppleSoft Basic was so limited that if you wanted to take full advantage of your computer as a programmer, you had to type in machine language hex code. I remember typing in pages of hex code to add the ability for AppleSoft basic to draw in double hires mode, another program to get more sounds from basic than the simple peek command could do, shape tables so you could write text in graphics mode, etc. At least with Basic you would get syntax errors. I never did have a real assembler for my Apple IIe. I used the built in miniassembmer to learn 65C02 assembly. But you couldn't use that to type in the assembly version of the code in magazines.